Documentation

Group chat

Group chats, also called conferences or multiuser chats ("MUC"), allow you to chat with multiple contacts simultaneously. Support for group chat varies by service, and the options available when joining a group chat also vary.

To join a group chat, it requires that you already have an account on the particular service. Otherwise, you can create a new account.

Initiating/joining a group chat

AIM, XMPP, SameTime, Yahoo, Zephyr

Choose File → Join Group Chat and enter the details for the chat. You may invite contacts to join you in the chat immediately via the Join Group Chat window, and you may invite them later by:

  • Selecting them in the contact list and choosing Contact → Invite to Chat and selecting the chat, or
  • Right-clicking (control-clicking) the contact or an open chat with the contact and choosing Invite to Chat and selecting the chat

MSN

To initiate a multiuser chat in MSN, right-click (control-click) on a contact you want to include in the chat and select Initiate Multiuser Chat.

You may then add additional contacts to that chat by:

  • Selecting them in the contact list and choosing Contact → Invite to Chat and selecting the chat, or
  • Right-clicking (control-clicking) the contact or an open chat with the contact and choosing Invite to Chat and selecting the chat

Bookmarks

To add a group chat as a bookmark, select Add Group Chat Bookmark from the Contact menu.

Group bookmarks' status messages reflect how many unread mentions or messages are in the chat.

Ranks and icons

In IRC group chats, or XMPP MUCs, a number of ranks exists. While their usage and permissions can vary per server or channel, usually they mean the following:

  • The founder. Only exists on XMPP. Can change the configuration of the room.
  • Operators (mode +o). Have the ability to kick, ban or change the rank of other users, and can change the channel's topic.
  • Half-operators (mode +h). Not available everywhere, often have same permissions as operators, but can't change the permissions of operators.
  • Voice (mode +v). Can still speak if the channel is muted (mode +m).
  • Normal.

Autojoining

There are two different ways of automatically joining a group chat when connecting:

  • Using a bookmark
    1. Bookmark the group chat.
    2. Get info (via Contact menu) for the bookmark.
    3. In the "Advanced" (fourth) pane check Automatically Join On Connect.
  • Using "Reopen chats from last time"
    1. Activate Reopen chats from last time on startup in Adium's General preferences.
    2. Leave the chat tab/window with your group chat open when quitting Adium.

Topics

Some message styles, such as all the default message styles in Adium 1.4, support the display of topics in a header at the top of the chat.

To make them show up

  1. Go to Adium Preferences.
  2. Select Messages from the toolbar.
  3. Select the "Group Chats" tab.
  4. Activate "Show Header".

For message styles that do not support the topic header, you can type "'/topic'" to show the topic.

Editing topics

To edit a topic either

  • double-click the header in the chat window, edit the text and press return/enter

or

  • type "/topic 'this is the new topic'".

To edit a topic double-click the header in the chat window, enter or edit the text and press enter.

Mentions

Adium provides indication of when your user name (and some other text you possibly specified - see below) has been mentioned in a group chat. Primarily it does so by displaying a grey line in the scrollbar (not customizable) but Adium also provides a way for message styles to apply custom styling to messages that contain a mention.

Mentions can be specified in Preferences → Advanced → Mention.

All message styles bundled with 1.4 (or newer) provide a different, style-integrated indication for mentions that indicate the specific message that contains a message.

See the dedicated article on Mentions for details.

Focus

Adium provides indication when a new message has been received in a group chat after your tab/window lost focus. Primarily it does so by displaying a red line in the scrollbar (not customizable) but Adium also provides a way for message styles to apply custom styling to messages that were received while focus was lost.

See the dedicated article on Focus for details.

Hiding/displaying join/leave messages

You can toggle hiding/displaying messages of users joining or leaving a group chat via the Display menu. Currently, this only works on a per-chat basis, it is not possible to hide these messages for all group chats in one go.